Steven Rea (also known as Steven X. Rea) is an American journalist, film critic,"Columnists: Steven Rea"
Philly.com. Retrieved December 13, 2013."Critics » Steven Rea"

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

. Retrieved December 13, 2013. web producer, and writer. He was a film critic for ''

The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pen ...

'' from 1992 through late 2016.

Early life

Rea was born in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, and raised in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

."Steven X Rea"
Rock's Backpages Library. Retrieved December 13, 2013. He is a graduate of

Stuyvesant High School , motto_translation = For knowledge and wisdom , address = 345 Chambers Street , city = New York , state = New York , zipcode = 10282 , country ...

in New York. Rea went to the West Coast for college, earning an undergraduate degree in English and Creative Writing from

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different ...

. He attended the Writers Workshop graduate program at the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 co ...

Career

Rea has written for multiple publications since 1975, as well as working for major record labels such as

Island Records Island Records is a multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded in 1959 by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall, and Leslie Kong in Jamaica, and was eventually sold to PolyGram in 1989. Island and A&M Records, anothe ...

. In 1982, he joined ''

'', where he covered

pop culture Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * ''Pop'' ...

topics including movies, pop music and books. He became one of its film critics in 1992 and left that post in late 2016. Other periodicals for which he has written include: ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular ...

'', ''

TV Guide TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program listings information as well as entertainment and television-related news. The company sold its print magazine division, TV Guide Magazine LLC, in 2008. Corporat ...

'', ''Family Fun'', '' Crawdaddy!'', ''Music World'', ''Phonograph Record Magazine'', '' High Fidelity'', ''Folk Scene'', ''

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

'', ''New West'', ''

Trouser Press ''Trouser Press'' was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference ...

'', '' Oui'', '' Chic'', ''

Record World ''Record World'' magazine was one of the three main music industry trade magazines in the United States, along with '' Billboard'' and '' Cashbox''. It was founded in 1946 under the name ''Music Vendor'', but in 1964 it was changed to ''Record W ...

'', and the '' Los Angeles Herald Examiner''. His film reviews and movie columns have been syndicated. Rea was an adjunct professor in the Cinema and Television program at the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at

Drexel University Drexel University is a private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a financier and philanthropist. Founded as Drexel Institute of Art, ...

. He host
Talk Cinema
events. He served on the Narrative Features jury of the 2012 Florida Film Festival"2012 Special Guests & Jurors"
Florida Film Festival Retrieved December 13, 2013. and the FIPRESCI jury at the 2014 Palm Springs International Film Festival. He is a member of the

National Society of Film Critics The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) is an American film critic organization. The organization is known for its highbrow tastes, and its annual awards are one of the most prestigious film critics awards in the United States. In January 2014, ...

(NSFC). Rea is the author of ''Hollywood Rides a Bike: Cycling with the Stars'' (2012), an expansion on his blog featuring photos of stars riding bikes, in which Rea explores his obsession with the details of these images and stARS. It received good reviews from ''The Telegraph'' (UK) and the ''San Francisco Chronicle''. He later published ''Hollywood Cafe: Coffee With The Stars'' (2016), which was favorably covered in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'', ''Metro US,'' and numerous other publications and websites. He is the curator of the

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to ...

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

, ''Rides a Bike'' . His essay on the British New Wave is published in the book ''European Cinema'' (2012). Additionally, Rea has worked as an editor and written fiction. His poetry has been published in ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phi ...

'' and '' The New York Quarterly''.

Personal life

Rea lived in

at the start of his career, but he and his wife have long resided in

Center City, Philadelphia Center City includes the central business district and central neighborhoods of Philadelphia. It comprises the area that made up the City of Philadelphia prior to the Act of Consolidation, 1854, which extended the city borders to be coterminous wi ...

Notes

External links

''On Movies''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rea, Steven 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American poets 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American bloggers American columnists American essayists American film critics National Society of Film Critics Members American male bloggers Drexel University faculty Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni Living people San Francisco State University alumni The Philadelphia Inquirer people Writers from New York City Year of birth missing (living people)